Mikel Arteta publicly praised Thomas Frank as \u201cextraordinary\u201d after the Tottenham Hotspur manager\u2019s departure was confirmed on Wednesday morning. The Arsenal manager set aside rivalry to acknowledge Frank\u2019s work and used the moment to highlight how precarious life is for Premier League coaches.<\/p>\n
Arteta linked the reaction to the broader reality facing managers. \u201cThis league is so competitive,\u201d Arteta fretted. \u201cWe are all vulnerable because anybody can beat you on the day, you know that. And that\u2019s really tough to manage.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end the percentage of games that you win has to be really high if you want to continue in the job,\u201d the Gunners boss warned. His comments arrived as Arsenal pursue honours on four fronts and while opponents describe them as among the best and most exciting teams in Europe.<\/p>\n
The manager also reflected on his own early difficulties at Arsenal. After winning the FA Cup in his first, COVID-riddled campaign, Arteta endured successive eighth-placed Premier League finishes. A poor start to 2021\u201322, losing the first three games, left him exposed at a time when results are decisive. Over his opening 61 Premier League matches, Arteta averaged 1.54 points per game.<\/p>\n
That figure was set alongside recent examples of other managers whose short-term records preceded exits. Enzo Maresca averaged 1.74 points per game over 57 Premier League matches at Chelsea before leaving the club in January. Ruben Amorim managed 47 games at Manchester United with a 1.23 points-per-game return. Thomas Frank\u2019s mark at Tottenham stood at 1.12 across 26 league matches.<\/p>\n
Attention now shifts to the north London derby. Spurs were expected to appoint at least an interim manager before hosting Arsenal on Sunday, Feb. 22, but Arteta indicated his focus will remain on preparation rather than speculation over opponents\u2019 candidates. He also noted that the list of potential replacements remains largely hypothetical and that some historical names can be excluded from serious consideration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta praised Thomas Frank as “extraordinary” and warned managers are vulnerable in the top flight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6811,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,172,1464],"tags":[1162,1087],"class_list":["post-6812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-epl","category-tottenham","tag-analytics","tag-coaching-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}